Senior lands prestigious international State Department internship

January 2012

Global Studies major Emmanuelle Calvet ’12 will intern this summer with the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, moving her a step closer to her goal of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. The bureau conducts foreign relations with Mexico, Canada, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, and directs, coordinates, and supervises U.S. government activities within this region.

As an intern, Calvet’s duties will be similar to that of an entry-level Foreign Service Officer and may include: reading and answering cable traffic, attending meetings, escorting visitors, compiling briefing brooks, special research projects, and a host of other assignments.

The South Grafton, MA, student applied for the internship in November 2011 through the State Department’s website. She received her assignment location on January 8, and her security clearance to work in an embassy is under way.

“I am so happy that I got this internship,” she says. “Working for the State Department is a way of getting my foot in the door and moving toward my dreams and goals.”

A deliberate and global education

As a junior, Calvet landed a summer internship with the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin. She had been researching internships since her freshmen year and wanted to work in a country she had never visited, allowing her to further her knowledge of international relations.

She is fluent in French, having spent the first 12 years of her life in France. She tutors the language in Bryant’s Academic Center for Excellence. As part of her Chinese minor, she has studied abroad at the Beijing Language and Cultural University in China, and she has traveled through China, as well as Malaysia and Singapore. She completed an internship with the American Red Cross of Central Massachusetts, receiving the organization’s “Rookie of the Year/Behind the Scenes” award after a summer working with the Disaster Action Team. Not to be overlooked, she was a professional ballerina before deciding to enroll at Bryant, training, rehearsing, and competing 50 hours each week while being home schooled.

Teamwork and compromise

In Berlin last summer, Calvet worked as a program coordinator for the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, a Non-Government Organization, where she worked with a team comprising American, French, German, Zimbabwean, South African, and Moroccan college students. The group was responsible for the marketing, planning, and execution of an international conference titled “Cultural Diplomacy in Africa.” They did not always agree on how to reach their target goals, she says, but they learned to compromise to reach them.

Calvet quickly came to realize that Bryant’s professors were right when they taught her that every organization – whether non-profit or for-profit – is a business and has to be run like one to succeed. That was one of the lessons she learned as part of her required business minor. She also came to value the importance of working in teams, something which Bryant is famous for.

Business minor pays off

Mid-point through her Berlin internship, she was promoted to group marketing director because of an idea she proposed based on what she had learned in her business classes.

“My business courses were never my favorite, but I was always told that having a strong foundation is crucial,” she says. “Bryant taught me well – I was able to think outside the box and develop a marketing strategy that reached a segment of the population that the agency had never marketed to before. It resulted in several applications coming in for the conference,” says Calvet. “Every time I tell my friends this story, they are amazed at the fact that, as a Global Studies major, I was able to come up with such a successful marketing plan.”

Calvet has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments for her résumé, which she prepared with the guidance of Bryant’s Amica Center for Career Education. She plans to work for two years after graduation, earn a graduate degree, and eventually take the Foreign Service Exam. Until then, she’s making the most of her last semester at Bryant.

“My Bryant education means the world to me,” says Calvet, who has been on the Dean’s List every semester. “In four years, I learned a lot academically and grew tremendously. I met many amazing people I plan to stay in touch with.

“People say that college is the best time of your life, and they are right,” says Calvet. “I did not believe them three years ago – but I do now.”